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Net Sticky Notes All Over London
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jul 06, 2004 02:43 AM
from the all-over-everywhere-would-be-good dept.
from the all-over-everywhere-would-be-good dept.
An anonymous reader writeswith a link to a BBC story which mentions in passing the Urban Tapestries project for distributed, collaborative location-based note-taking, excerpting "In practice this means giving people a specially-equipped mobile phone that allows them to wander around central London and leave virtual notes for other people to read by writing them on the phone and then 'sticking' them to a building. It works because the position of each phone is constantly tracked so when a note is written the place can be noted - when someone else goes to the same place, they can read the note."
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first note (Score:5, Funny)
"call jenny for a good time: 555-0634"
Re:first note (Score:3, Funny)
Re:first note (Score:2, Funny)
"First note!"
Re:first note (Score:2)
Re:first note (Score:2)
Or alternatively, the right answer is that they're 8 digits... Well, mine is...
Re:first note (Score:5, Funny)
SSH Jenni for a good time:
IP Address 66.35.250.150
MAC Address: 6A-4F-39-B7-15-C8
WEP Key: 1764F31243B6A43C426C11701C6D583D
Parent
Re:first note (Score:3, Funny)
finger Jenny for a good time.
Re:first note (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:first note (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Brave new World (Score:5, Insightful)
It's FUN!!!!!
Also if you want to read the NY Times, get a passport, bank, shop, buy things or in fact breath, you will need to give someone complete access at all times to every facet of your live so that you may be served better. Remember it's not data rape if you consent.
Re:Brave new World (Score:2)
Latest Cellular Technology Users in New Era of... (Score:4, Funny)
Nifty
And the mobile phone operator GETS RICH (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Make location-based 'text note' service
2. Add stupid people (supply: near infinite)
3. PROFIT!!!!
could be useful... (Score:5, Funny)
-I urinated on that corner last night, use other side of street.
-Lonely? looking for sex? inquire within.
-Missing dog...50 pound reward.
Re:could be useful... (Score:3, Funny)
Sweet (Score:3, Insightful)
More Spams (Score:5, Interesting)
then unwanted sms'es,
then unwanted NOTES!
What's next?
Re:More Spams (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Bathroom Grafitti (Score:3, Insightful)
Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Geocaching (Score:5, Informative)
The official Geocaching website [geocaching.com].
Re:Geocaching (Score:4, Informative)
Well, technically, there is a different -
Geocaching is primarily GPS based, and locating position with the help of satellites that provides longitude and latitude coordinates, and is very accurate.
This Urban Tapestries is GSM/GPRS based, using a mobile phone, locating a position with the help of surrounding mobile phone base stations. The accuracy of a position is dependent on the site topology, and could be anywhere around 10-50 meters radius in urban context, for example.
Application wise, I think each serve slightly different purpose too -
Urban Tapestries will probably do a information push when one is within a vincinity, and may not require one to actively seek it, except to give Urban Tapstries permission to push. This also means that it could be subscription based.
Theoretically, it could be possible to use geocaching caches(it's data) in GSM environment. However, the geocaching cache's seeker will probably have a harder time, as the cache will be very hard to find.
Parent
"Dave... (Score:5, Funny)
Can now be written absolutely ANYWHERE in central london
I wonder how it will work on elevators! "floor 2: Dave is a cunt" "floor 3: Davis is still a cunt"
Can you say 'cunt' half a dozen times in a
Public authoring good, but misuse concerns looms (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the big problem lies in the possibilities for misuse, if accountability is not there. The liabilities that the tapestries information provides might be a privacy concern too, especially when it infringes someone else's privacy.
For this to work, one way is to have some kind of moderation and meta-moderation capability on the quality of the information pasted to the buildings. ;)
only a matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Slander or libel? (Score:3, Informative)
oooooohhhhhh fun (Score:5, Funny)
Privacy?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Privacy?? (Score:2)
More Insidious Uses (Score:5, Insightful)
Owner not home from 8:30AM to 6:30PM, please rob.
Smash my windows!
I'm watching you, pervert!
There's plenty of scope for use and abuse of this. You could tag a person's house as belonging to a paedophile, or claim they are a rapist, all without any sort of screening. Not good.
Sort of like Usenet overlaid on the world (Score:5, Insightful)
Its really more like Usenet, except you have to physically go to where each newsgroup is instead of them coming to you. And like Usenet, if this type of thing ever became truly public I bet it would be vandalized by spammers and idiots and rendered practically unusable.
Re:Sort of like Usenet overlaid on the world (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, if you had the plugin, you could place a post-it style note onto web pages you visited. And people who had the same plugin could see it when they visited it. Seemed a sorta novel idea -- but one which was ripe for abuse (by users and advertisers alike). This cell phone concept sounds just like it.
I remember the particular article because I think the writer said there were either lawsuits already pending (even though the product hadn't really gone "gold" yet) or at least threats of lawsuits. Heaven forbid some disgruntled consumer taint a dot-com brand by placing "The widgets sold here suck ass!" notes on a vendor's web site.
In any case, I never heard of the product again (kinda like Pointcast). Probably best, but I still wonder what the name of the software was, who was the person who came up with it, and what happened to it.
Parent
geonotes (Score:3, Informative)
Location Linked Information (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Location Linked Information (Score:2, Informative)
Great, great. (Score:5, Insightful)
So now I can walk around and as well as being bombarded by ads, aggressive beggars (this is London, right), and suchlike traditional annoyances, I can ALSO read all the pathetic, repetitive thoughts of the erstwhile world capital's smug Nathan Barleys. I wonder how long before I get to the first "I am soooo stoned... hehehe" message. Probably about 20 seconds.
Luckily, it'll only take about 20 more seconds before the whole system is taken over by drug dealers and prostitutes!
Silver lining!
PS I am not a bitter, misanthropic loner. I just really think it'll be that annoying.
PPS Ok, I _am_ a bitter, misanthropic loner. You got me
Prior art (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately it got canned early on for several reasons, one was that locations were rather broad which meant that often the note made no sense as it covered a wide area and secondly because it was abused chronically.
what would you do... (Score:2, Funny)
Already Been Done (Score:4, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Insightful) (Score:2)
House Hunting (Score:2, Interesting)
At Trafagar Square (Score:2)
Signal to noise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagined it could help with directions to the nearest tube stop, police station or whatever. Lost tourists would be shepherded to safety. Public-spirited Londoners would post interesting and informative nuggets of local culture.
Fun uses could include placing a string of notes by pubs to mark out a pub crawl or helping commuters hook up with that girl they see each day on the opposite platform and never get a chance to talk to.
Then I snapped out of it.
Without any sort of regulation or structure, this is just going to become a blizzard of virtual flyposting. We already see enough junk posters pasted up around the city. When you can do the equivalent digitally just by walking through a neighbourhood, when you know that the section of the population viewing that content will be a target market (young professionals, gadget-hungry kids) the opportunity to spam will just be way too hard to resist. Any worthwhile content will be buried amongst acres of worthless junk. At least with email you know that (apart from a relatively small number of spammers) most people with your address are people you would want to have your address. Even then, spam is still a huge problem.
When every kid with a mobile can post inane junk and every 'guerilla marketer' can post repeatedly about their latest product, the signal to noise ratio quickly drops to unusable levels. The only advantage is that you don't see it unless you look for it.
communities? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just the same - you'd probably join just a few channels that interest you and that you trust (whatever that means). You could certainly imagine a hierarchical categorization like usenet groups, with some of those channels being moderated or closed to members only.
This will show up, eventually. (Score:5, Funny)
A policeman (white aura) stands here, looking around in search of troublemakers.
Visible exits are north, west, east, (down)."
Reminds me of OpenGuides (Score:3, Informative)
http://london.openguides.org [openguides.org]
Yep, it's another wiki (though one with a shedload of metadata bolted on)
Finally, they've done it... (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine the digital scavenger hunts, finding the virtual phone number on the wall (no longer do I have to visit those nasty public restrooms and jot down numbers).
This could be fun!
Sounds Like Fun! (Score:4, Interesting)
Some clues would be in a code the others had to crack, sometimes they would be pictures, maps, hints about landmarks, or riddles. Sometimes just straight-forward directions to the next note. It was just as much fun trying to come up with clues for the notes as it was to be the ones trying to follow the notes. It was like a non-stop treasure hunt.
We had a blast playing it! There was no prize at the end, no points -- though we occasionally took time into account. You had to think fast! There were a couple of times when one group would be looking for the notes while the hider was still actually hiding the notes. As competitive as we were, it's interesting to note that no one ever cheated playing this game.
At times, it could become a fairly sophisticated game -- especially considering we were all under 10 years old at the time.
I can easily see how these phones could be used to play this game all over again! Of course, at the end, rather than a note saying "You Win," it could be dinner and beer for everyone who reaches the end -- last one in buys!
Graffiti (Score:3, Funny)
Re:need... more.... TINFOIL!!! (Score:3, Insightful)